Alchemia (ASX:ACL) has wrapped up a capital raising round with an oversubscribed SPP, securing a total of $12.95m to help fund its metastatic colorectal cancer trial. [ + ]

Sirtex Medical (ASX:SRX) has signed on the final patient for SIRFLOX, a trial of its SIR-Spheres liver cancer treatments that has been recruiting since 2006. [ + ]

Mesoblast (ASX:MSB) CEO Silviu Itescu has been named the first recipient of the Pontifical Council for Culture and Stem for Life Foundation’s Key Innovation Award. [ + ]

A team of Melbourne researchers has received funding to take their work on a new class of anticancer drugs out of the lab and into the clinic. [ + ]

Thanks to USB sticks and video streaming, DVD players are becoming all but obsolete. But their cheap optics may find a new life in a cost-effective and speedy technique for on-the-spot HIV testing and other analytics. [ + ]

Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a new potential therapeutic target for lowering cholesterol that could be an alternative or complementary therapy to statins. [ + ]

An announcement today of a licensing agreement with US drug company Sarepta Therapeutics to develop new treatments based on award-winning research into Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) at The University of Western Australia may lead to the state’s first genetic drug derived from WA research. [ + ]

Patrys (ASX:PAB) has completed initial treatment for half of the 12 multiple myeloma patients to be involved in a clinical trial of anticancer antibody PAT-SM6. [ + ]

The Australian Synchrotron has announced the establishment of the Australian Synchrotron Fellows Program, available to outstanding individuals whose passion for science matches that of the AS’s staff and who will be rewarded with access to Australia’s premier scientific and innovation support facility. [ + ]

Researchers have been able to reconstruct the genome sequence of an outbreak strain of Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) that caused over 50 deaths in Germany. They used an approach known as metagenomics, which bypasses the need for growing bacteria in the lab. [ + ]

pSivida (ASX:PVA) has launched channels on each of the four major social networks to provide more outlets to communicate key information to investors. [ + ]

Pharmaxis (ASX:PXS) has tapped United Medical as its exclusive distribution partner and sales rep for cystic fibrosis treatment Bronchitol in Brazil. [ + ]

UK diagnostics development company AgPlus Diagnostics is to collaborate with New Zealand-based BioTest Diagnostics in the development of a rapid and convenient test for canine progesterone that will be used to pinpoint the narrow window for artificial insemination in canine breeding programs. [ + ]

That question was recently answered with the help of a so-called free electron X-ray laser, which makes it possible to follow in real time how bindings in a molecule are changed and broken. The study, published in Science, found, among other things, evidence of a much-discussed intermediate state before molecules bind to or leave a metal surface. The possibility of monitoring at the molecular level how the electron structure changes in a chemical reaction creates entirely new opportunities for investigating and understanding key chemical processes in detail. [ + ]

People often think that other people are staring at them even when they aren’t, vision scientists have found. [ + ]